I have had this phone for about a year now. and i am very disappointed in the lack of interest sony take into this phone, i live in the middle east and the ps pocket does not work. i am limited to 5 games on my phone if more it will say "no storage space" and the constant lag i get from the phone. i have grown bored of the phone and havent used the gamepad for months now. i truly regret that i bought this phone. and when they said no ics i just got furious for i have been waiting for it for months now. hoping for an upgrade. im throwing away this phone or use it for tests and buy an htc one x instead.

h3ll8lazer, 13 Aug 2012I say forget ics if you own a Play, the play works perfectly well the way it is. if your despe... moreWHY SUCH LONG WINDED speech .. u love sony ..so u do .. many feel deceived by sony fony -thats a harsh fact ..and u donot run sony business we r sure .. if u r a self appointed sony tout -- sorry 4 u .. btw- I have several retired old sony handsets -oldest being 15yrs old .. no more sony fony ..unless sony publically apologises and sony tell the truth about WHY NOT ICS FOR XPALY AS PROMISED INTIL 23May 2012 by sony ...pathetic excuses shame sony --world corp.-world leader in tech.

Shameful!
"We can confirm that there will be no compensation offered to Sony Ericsson Xperia Play owners as a result of this cancellation, all we can do is aplogise for any inconvenience you may experienced."

This is the answer from sony after having sold the Xplay as an ICS phone.

And THAT is the main problem: as a reputed company, sony's developers and marketeers knew exactly how important ICS was in selling a brand new phone wih an innovative gamepad.

Every sensible customer would ask:
"Is this worth the price?
Has it got any future?"

As the phone was expensive and the gamepad was supposed to be more than a temporal marketing gimmick, promising ICS upgrade was a definitive advantage and a strong selling point.

Sony knew upgrading the Xperia Play would increase its life, its compability and, thus, increase its value and sales.

And that was taken for granted all along.
It was not something people imagined r wishe... It was promised at the buying moment!

No one - in good faith - doubted this phone would be upgradable to Android 4.0.

But as sales plumbered, Sony released the Vita console and simply lost interest in a phone that wasn't profitable enough.
They simply broke their promise and denied what had always been announced.

Would the Xperia have sold as it did if the ICS upgrade wasn't taken for granted?

Consumers have every right to feel deceived.
The Xperia Play was meant to get ICS, its price reflected that.
And, in order to keep selling, Sony continued reporting it would all be fixed, and their developers were working to get customers the best gaming experience.

Someone with coroporate responsibilities has lied, has deceived thousands of buyers from all over the world.

How will consumers feel when new games (such as "Broken Sword") will be only available to ICS as minimum requirement?

Sony only cared abut aking more and more money and deserted the phone because it wasn't profitable enough.
If they wanted to, we would already be playing on Android 4.x!
There is no doubt about that!

Sony's rationale for canning the ICS for the Xperia PLAY was performance issues with games.
If this was true,If this was indeed to be believed, then one has to wonder why Sony hasn't released the updated Adreno 205 driver. The driver update was released by Qualcomm on the 30th of December at the end of LAST YEAR. The update is believed to give a performance increase of up-to 1.5x or even 2x in some cases depending on phone and app. This is just one in a number of very simple measures that Sony could but haven't taken to bring us a stable ICS to the Xperia PLAY. Another is the clock speed/frequency. It is currently clocked to a measly 1Ghz while it can be safely clocked to as high a frequency as 1.9Ghz, so why not clock it to a still very stable 1.4Ghz, would this not increase performance to a sufficient enough level?

Alas, this brings me back to my earlier criticisms of Sony's dev team and their utter incompetence, or at best, lack of giving a damn for supporting older devices. I was foolish to expect better from Sony, a lesson well learnt indeed.

I say forget ics if you own a Play, the play works perfectly well the way it is. if your desperate for ics get an ics compatible phone and buy a bluetooth controller!! Forget the new games on the android market and go back to the old school where games were written well, instead of trying to showcase a device's capabilities with no heart. alot of people are overlooking the PLAY's emulation capabilities. i have fspe (playstation 1 emulator) installed on my play and all of the roms (that i own legally on disk i might add!!) run perfectly well. the game pad works perfect and you get the same joy out of playing timeless titles like ff7, metal gear solid and soul blade......etc etc as you did when they were first released. Guys, use your heads. don't be a loser and try to compete with the next person with the latest handset/os, just be happy with what you have! p.s can't blame sony for trying to run a business!!

And i dont mean UI or BETA versions or any of that sH$#T!,, i mean the real thing! the real ICS! i didnt think it was real>> settings> about phone> and there it was 4.0.1,, i dont care if its fake or SH#@T!,, ALL i know that it is way diffrent than that of Gingerbread 2.3.4,, very cool experience ,, i dont know what they did,, SO Once again, i dont know what you guys are talking about,, hehehehehe,, yahooooow!

Im here in the Philippines,, i took my PLAY to a popular mall here called "Greenhills", theyr like miracle workers when it comes to mobile devices [THEY CAN DO ANYTHING], Anyways, for some reason, the smart assess over thr wr able to put my XPLAY on ICS!!! its great!! ALL GAMES WORK FINE// 3 now still NOW problem nor glitches!,, so I dont know what u guys are talking about,,, bwhahahahahahahah I LOVE YOU XPLAY!

To all the Xperia Play users, Sony didn't release ICS for this phone and I am also frustrated about it... Well there's something else, try this mod http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t­=1546134 its Xperia S UI for Xperia play this mod got tons of features! Like mobile bravia engine... This mod requires root and works with locked bootloader... MUST TRY! After I applied this mod I am happy with my Xperia Play... :-D Be sure to remove Useless apps and bloatware that u need...

Erich, 10 Aug 2012In brazil the phone do not received the update for android 2.3.4!!sonyfony did NOT relesse any update over 234 gingerbread for xplay -- anywhere in the world -as far as we know even tough sonyfony promised upto 23may 2012 in all emails to us that ics update for xplay was due very soon .. on 24may 2012 sonyfony quietly omitted xplay from update list .. SONYFONY IS SLY ..

that's right. sony has abandoned the play and its users. no profit, no support. that is their motto.
they don't care if you're still under contract paying for a phone slashed of its future compability and potential.
the very least they could do was updating kernel and adreno gpu drivers, which are ready for months.
they simply don't care about the phone anymore. let's face it. it's got nothing to do with the gamepad.
there's capitalism thought for you.
you may submit to it, you may think there's nothing you can do to change it.

s, 08 Aug 2012P.s Again for all the moaners u cud go to the great dev site which prob has ics available for ... moreS- STOP calling other commmentors MOANERS-U R ARROGANT AND IGNORANT .. if u like xperiaplay so much -buy 100 and give to ur neighbours as xmas presents .. others posters have genuine experinces and views .. STOP TALKING NONSENSE ABOUT OTHER POSTERS . learn some basic manners . ITS UPTO sony to be truthful with sony customers --sony must never be SLY SONY FONY ..or indeed any other handset makers or service providers .. this 2012.